In pool checkers, black is supposed to go first. On this website, black goes first in American/English Checkers (correct!) but white goes first in Pool Checkers (wrong!). I was just playing pool checkers at a club dedicated to pool checkers and they confirmed that it's correct that the darker color goes first. So, this should be a very easy fix for the website.

1

@harris
IDF (see website idf64.org/ ), which is LEADING organization in matters on draughts variants which are played on 8x8 board, organizes international tournaments in Pool draughts according to UNIFIED rules, where:
a) a game is started by white;
b) alphanumeric (or chesslike) notation is preferred over Manouri (or numeric) notation.
The reason behind it is that Pool draughts is highly compatible to Brazilian and Russian draughts, and contemporary Pool draughts players, particularly Africans, are learning from Brazilian and Russian publishings, because there are only few publishings on Pool draughts which are suitable for advanced players. As well, let me note that many players from Germany and Poland are playing Pool draughts as native variant, yet they play under rule where a game is started by white, and it would be ridiculous to divide one variant of draughts just because of colour preference!

12

Hi @harris thanks for your post.
I'm not a checkers expert, but it does seem that different groups have different rules for the subtleties of draughts variants. We added the Pool variant to PlayStrategy following a request from the IDF, who have run tournaments on this platform in the past. Therefore we have followed the IDF protocols (as mentioned by @kalnap), and don't plan to change the start colour for Pool.

22

It is not enough to declare yourself a LEADING organization to dictate the rules that existed before the existence of such an organization.
Black should go first no matter what IDF thinks.

42

@Pokshtya All contemporary draughts history starts with Spanish draughts where WHITE should go first.
Any variant where BLACK (or RED) goes first, is later innovation, but this innovation doesn't bring any commodity to players, so it is meaningless. Moreover, if you look at Draughts PDN 3.0 documentation (see http://pdn.fmjd.org/gametype.html ) , you might notice that all regional Pool draughts traditions (unified, American, Zimbabwean, Jamaican) are kept under SAME code 23, which means that any adjusted draughts pdn viewer should be able to recognize difference. There is no reason to provoke any discussions on draughtsmen colour: if you hate original colours, you can even play with pink and green draughtsmen, and it doesn't have any impact on game.

12